The Snowcastle

Inkjet print on cotton fibre.

30x23.50x1"

Limited edition 1 of 9.

Every winter, Yellowknife builds a castle. It begins with ice harvested from Great Slave Lake — the same lake it will stand upon — cut into blocks and shaped into windows that catch the light like stained glass. The walls go up block by block, the arches, the battlements, the gothic windows. By February it is complete. By April it is gone.

I was drawn to watch it take shape. What stopped me on this particular visit was the great ice window — the way the winter light bounced off it, turning something cut from a frozen lake into something that belonged in a cathedral. I chose this angle for the depth of it, the way the wall leads your eye along the length of the structure and out onto the frozen expanse beyond. And I kept the scaffolding in the frame. I liked that it was still becoming.

There is something quietly profound about the effort Yellowknifers put into building something so beautiful and so temporary. But then, that is the north. That is the knife.

Part of my Life in the Knife series, Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.